Sexually transmitted disease rates in El Paso spiked to record highs in recent years, according to public health department data. The El Paso Department of Public Health reported a 10-year high of 7,681 new cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in 2017 – an 11 percent increase from 2016 and a 62 percent increase from [...]

Sexually transmitted disease rates in El Paso spiked to record highs in recent years, according to public health department data.

The El Paso Department of Public Health reported a 10-year high of 7,681 new cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in 2017 – an 11 percent increase from 2016 and a 62 percent increase from 2007.

STD Rates Reported By Year Using Data From El Paso Department of Public Health

“Nationwide it’s on the rise. STDs, the whole nine yards, the gonorrhea, the syphilis, the chlamydia, this is not unique for El Paso,” said Faduma Shegow, clinic services manager for the STD clinic of El Paso. “It’s happening nationwide.”

Sexually transmitted diseases covered in the report include curable diseases such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis, and chronic diseases such as HIV, hepatitis C, and AIDS. Herpes and HPV data was not available through the El Paso Department of Public Health.

Health officials and local advocacy groups are trying to combat the rising numbers through outreach and education, said Elias Gonzalez, the HIV prevention and education specialist for the City of El Paso’s HIV Prevention Program.

The city maintains an HIV prevention program and an STD preventative medicine program to provide education on everything from the biology of STDs, to how they are contracted, treated, and how to live with a positive diagnosis.

Through education, the city is hoping to help residents become more engaged in protecting their health and the community’s health.

“I think many see it as a stigma to come to the STD clinic, they think ‘no, it’s a bad place and only very promiscuous people go’ and that’s not true,” said Tabatha Olague, nursing program manager for the STD clinic of El Paso. ” People come in monogamous relationships, they come yearly just to get checked,”

Tabatha Olauge and Faduma Shegow of the STD clinic say it is important to educate El Pasoans on seeking care for their sexual health. Photo credit: Laneige Conde

Couples in a monogamous relationship should get tested once a year and single people should get tested every three to six months, if they are sexually active, Olague said.

She also recommended that people who use intravenous drugs get tested every three to six months. This can help to significantly decrease STD rates, Olague said.

More frequent testing is also helpful to detect certain STDs that have delayed, mild, or no symptoms. Symptoms can also very depending on the person.

“It’s individual, your body’s immunity, your strength and all that, and your health goes into it, some people show the symptoms, some people won’t show the symptoms but with the test we can tell,” Shegow said.

The STD clinic of El Paso also is turning to preventative measures. They have implemented partner therapy, in which they will give medication for the partner of someone diagnosed with an STD if they are too afraid to come to the clinic in person. If the person has multiple partners, then they will provide enough medication for each partner.

“This way that we do this is much more effective, because the person doesn’t even know that we know them, they are getting medication, they are getting treatment, so it’s a super plus and I think this is going to help our numbers too,” Shegow said.

The HIV Prevention Program is also striving to reduce infection rates and help citizens who are HIV or AIDS positive. The program partners with the M Factor, a local organization that works mainly with gay and bisexual men who have sex with men, however are open to anyone who wants more information on HIV, AIDS, and HEP C.

The two organizations promote the U=U campaign for people living with HIV. The campaign, which stands for Undetectable = Untransmittable, follows the premise that when people who have an HIV positive diagnosis are regularly taking medication and visiting a doctor, they can reach an undetectable status. The virus is suppressed enough that it does not show up on modern testing. The person still has HIV, however the chances of passing it on decrease significantly, Gonzalez said.

Routine testing is necessary for early detection, which can lead to HIV positive people achieving an undetectable viral status. This will help to decrease the spread of HIV and keep HIV positive people from contracting AIDS.

“That’s why we promote a U=U stand frame because stigma has a very big impact on the lives of people living with HIV. People living with HIV often have to deal with concerns that they’re diseased or unclean and the fact of the matter is as long as their in treatment, as long as their undetectable, they pose very little to no risk to people not living with HIV,” Gonzalez said.

El Pasoans can visit the Department of Public Health on El Paso Street for STD testing.

El Pasoans can begin getting tested at the age of 13. All testing centers in El Paso are confidential and non-discriminatory. They want everyone to feel comfortable seeking help.

“We don’t ask about citizenship status or anything like that because that’s not necessary for what we do and it’s more important that people understand their health at this point,” Gonzalez said.

El Paso clinics distribute preventative and bilingual literature to help educate patients on the importance of good sexual health. Photo credit: Laneige Conde

The STD clinic of El Paso tests for chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea, HEP C, HIV and AIDS. They can also test for yeast infections, bacterial vaginosis and trich in women, if requested. They suggest visiting an OBGYN to get tested for HPV. The test is $40, however they will never turn away a patient that cannot pay.

The HIV Prevention Program and M Factor provide free HIV, syphilis, and HEP C testing, and will refer patients to further care if needed. They also do off-site testing.

]]>34329Please help us develop a story about feral cats in El Pasohttp://borderzine.com/2019/02/please-help-us-develop-a-story-about-feral-cats-in-el-paso/
Wed, 20 Feb 2019 00:39:00 +0000http://borderzine.com/?p=34322

Borderzine is working on a story about feral cats in El Paso, Texas, and the city’s program to Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR). To help guide our reporting on the topic, we’d like to hear from you about what issues you’re concerned with regarding El Paso’s cat population. You can help by filling out the following form. [...]

Borderzine is working on a story about feral cats in El Paso, Texas, and the city’s program to Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR). To help guide our reporting on the topic, we’d like to hear from you about what issues you’re concerned with regarding El Paso’s cat population. You can help by filling out the following form.

In 1999, the Mexican poet Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz began her transformation into becoming a Chicana. The 17th century Hieronymite nun, one of Mexico’s best poets, was already dead by about three hundred years before the term Chicana came to be used, but nonetheless, with the publication of Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s ground-breaking [...]

In 1999, the Mexican poet Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz began her transformation into becoming a Chicana.

The 17th century Hieronymite nun, one of Mexico’s best poets, was already dead by about three hundred years before the term Chicana came to be used, but nonetheless, with the publication of Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s ground-breaking novel, Sor Juan’s Second Dream, she became a Chicana feminist icon.

Today Chicana intellectual activists know who she is and how important she is to Chicana identity and resistance. She was too brilliant to want to get married to some “hombre necio.” She wanted to develop her mind and resist convention.

Gaspar de Alba’s novel may have been part of a late 20th century Zeitgeist that liberated feminine images from male historical narratives and redefined their socio-political significance, like Sandra Cisneros did for La Malinche, but it is certain that de Alba’s book influenced Chicana feminist interpretation of Sor Juana’s life. Her story became about self-determination, empowerment, the narrative of a mind so great she could not be held down by the confines of patriarchy.

Sor Juana became a Chicana.

In her latest novel, The Curse of the Gypsy: Ten Stories and a Novella, Gaspar de Alba may very well do the same thing for a relatively unknown historical figure, the Catholic Saint Liberata Wilgefortis, the bearded woman.

This novella within Gaspar del Alba’s new book has the epic title, “The True and Tragic Story of Liberata Wilgefortis Who, Having Consecrated Her Virginity to the Goddess Diana to Avoid Marriage, Grew a Beard and Was Crucified.”

It creatively takes place during the Roman empire, when Christianity was still emerging as a rebellious religion. The legend, as Gaspar de Alba tells it, starts with a rich and powerful woman, the Governor’s wife, who gives birth to nine daughters, all of them born with “birth defects;” for example, two of them without hands, one of them a hermaphrodite, and one with fur all over her body.

The hairy one is Liberata Wilgefortis, and she is the only child the Governor’s wife lets live. She orders her midwife to drown the other eight. She would have killed all nine of the girls, but the midwife, Basilia, pleads with her to let at least one of them live. Basilia then prays to the goddess Diana about the fate of the other eight, asking her for direction in making the fateful choice that will drive the story.

The goddess Diana is, of course, a Roman God, but she has remained a relevant deity for goddess worship even today, taking the role some indigenous women might give to Tonantizin, the Magna Mater, the Mother God.

The fact that the protagonist of the story, Basilia, a midwife –a profession that is itself an archetype of feminist spirituality – is close to the goddess Diana suggests that this is a story of female spirituality. There were many other Roman gods, masculine deities like Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, but they have little or no place in the story of Wilgefortis and Basilia.

In fact, Basilia feels close to a trinity of world goddesses, Bridget (Ireland), Isis (Egypt), and Minerva (Etruscan), which reflects her mystic strength in that she was not tied to a national or regional religion. Instead, she feels connected to goddesses that she believes rule and influence the various worlds, birth, love, and death. Well into the story, a man witnesses Basilia’s wisdom and charity, and he suggests that she should become a member of the new religion, Christianity, but she responds, “I shall never give up on my goddesses, sir.”

The governor’s wife orders the midwife to kill all nine of the girls, but Basilia convinces her to keep the most “normal,” the hairy baby, and she promises to drown the other eight in the river, which she does not do, even though she is commanded to do so by her spiritual leader, the MAGE, a patriarch. She finds families for the girls, who grow up to be happy young women. They will never marry, because of their deformities, but this does not seem to impede them from living full and meaningful lives. All is well, for a while.

I won’t tell what happens to the girls, but the story comes to an inevitabile, heartbreaking conclusion. The narrative of course is focused on Liberata Wilgefortis, whom the governor’s wife raises as her daughter, although she mostly hides her from the governor, who would kill the girl if he saw how hairy she is.

The midwife feels an affinity for little hairy Wilgefortis. But her Mage condemns her to isolation from other humans for letting the other girls live. The two are separated for 12 years.

During that time, Basilia lives in a cave. She eats nuts and berries and placenta from the birth of the nine girls, and studies mysticism and science and the occult, reads all night long, and takes walks in the forest during the days, sleeping on rocks.

To find wisdom in a cave is of course a powerful and oft-evoked symbol of great mystic narratives, like Moses de Leon, who in 1213 in Spain found the Zohar in a cave, the primary text of the Kabbalah, not to mention the cave of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.

In fact, an important aspect of the book is its references to different mystical and spiritual incantations and rituals. The stories provide us with details that could only come from painstaking research, or like the writer Tim Z Hernandez tells me, “Geeking out on the research.” There are specific and accurate details about Roman and Gypsy spiritualty, customs, and language.

As Basilia was living like a mystic for twelve years in the cave, Wilgefortis grew up, and the hair on her body disappeared, but she was skinny and ugly, and for that the father hated her. He wanted to marry her off as soon as possible, but who would marry her? He finds the only man willing to do so – a decrepit old man, decades her senior, who just wanted a young woman with whom he could breed.

Like Sor Juana Ines, Wilgefortis does not want to get married. She may lack the intellectual vigor of Sor Juana, but she has an incredible insight into the spiritual world, and even communicates on a regular basis with the spirit of her dead brother. She, like her midwife, has access to the spirit world.

After 12 years, Basilia emerges from the cave and becomes the nurse for Wilgefortis. And they become very close. When the father tries to marry her to the old man, she resists, and the midwife cannot help but help her.

Through incantation or prayer to the goddesses or simply through fate itself, Wilgefortis grows a beard, so no man will ever want to marry her. The beautiful irony surfaces that in a time when women only wanted to get married, Wilgefortis only wants to NOT get married. Like Sor Juana, she wants to determine her own fate.

What makes this book an important part of the Latinx literary canon is that it reinterprets this mythical Catholic figure through a Latinx feminist perspective. Wilgefortis becomes Chicana.

But perhaps even more important for the reader of fiction is that at the root of these stories, one can sense the love of the writer has for writing. Along with the story of Wilgefortis, Gaspar de Alba writes interconnected stories about a gypsy girl named Margarita, who is impregnated by the poet Garcia Lorca in Granada, Spain, a story which organically ends up years later in El Paso, TX.

Gaspar de Alba loves to tell stories. Every detail is packed with the desire to welcome the reader into this real world of the imagination, every detail bursting with the spirit of sharing:

“Once her house (Basilia’s) had been a free-standing dwelling, a round house in the Celtic style, the woven branches of the round walls daubed with clay and dung, and a high sloped roof touched with rye.”

And if a writer loves to tell a story, the reader is going to love to listen to this one.

SAN ELIZARIO, Texas – What started as a project by Auburn University to study ways to protect a unique ecosystem of bees in the Chihuahuan Desert has lead to a series of pioneering environmental renovation projects for this historic frontier city on the eastern edge of El Paso County. While fewer than 10,000 people live [...]

SAN ELIZARIO, Texas – What started as a project by Auburn University to study ways to protect a unique ecosystem of bees in the Chihuahuan Desert has lead to a series of pioneering environmental renovation projects for this historic frontier city on the eastern edge of El Paso County.

While fewer than 10,000 people live in San Elizario, the area is special to researchers because it is home to one of the largest diversities of bee species and bee pollinated plants in North America. Auburn University researchers began working with the City of San Elizario in studying the bees in 2017. They soon realized there was more going on that deserved further study.

“We were very much bee-centric and now we actually think much more in terms of the ecological interactions between plants and insects. We think about it in a much more systematic way than we used to,” said Bashira Chowdhury, a pollination ecologist at Auburn University.

Sphaeralcea, a plant popular with bees, is protected in San Elizario by city ordinance. Photo by Laneige Conde, Borderzine.com

The discoveries the researchers made lead the city council to pass an ordinance protecting three types of plants. The plants are baileya, which is a natural insecticide; sphaeralcea, a plant that feeds bees; and portulaca (purslane), a vegetable that can be domesticated to become edible. San Elizario is the first city in the United States to pass such a biodiversity ordinance, according to Chowdhury.

“The biggest part is educating people that all these things around us are beneficial to us,” said San Elizario Alderperson David Cantu. “And, if we recognize and know how to distinguish the difference between a plant that’s viable from a plant that’s just a nuisance, we can really do a lot.”

The three plants are excluded from a city nuisance ordinance aimed at reducing weed growth. This protection allows them to grow as they normally would. Violation of the ordinance by disturbing the plants is a misdemeanor offense, with a maximum penalty of $2,000 per occurrence.

In addition to passing the biodiversity ordinance, the city also has initiated several projects that it says will benefit both residents and the plant life in the area.

Raise beds at Parque De Los Ninos willl serve as research plots for Auburn researchers, farmers, and San Eli Wild students. Photo by Laneige Conde, Borderzine.com

One such project is Wild San Eli, where middle school students engage in science and scientific research. They are shown and taught some of the scientific techniques that the Auburn scientists have been using to to conduct their research. Students also learn about new agricultural careers that they can go into.

“Agriculture has become so much more than what a lot of people think is the traditional farmer,” said Maya Sanchez, San Elizario city administrator. “It’s not just putting a seed in the ground and it grows. It’s utilizing the latest in technology, drone technology, GPS tracking. All of this is already a part of current-day agriculture and so our students are learning that indeed they are jobs that can start at $300,000 a year in this field.”

Parque De Los Ninos is being renovated to be a space for recreation, research and community gardening. Photo by Laneige Conde, Borderzine.com

Another project will renovate a children’s playground, the Parque de Los Ninos, into a combination playground, research area and community garden. It will serve as a training space for the Wild San Eli students and the Homestead Science program, where families can learn to grown their own plants.

The research will begin by focusing on growing portulaca (purslane), a flowering succulent used as a decorative plant in desert landscaping. It is often considered to be just a weed in the wild and has a bitter taste. However, when cultivated correctly it can be made edible. The USDA has certified it as high demand crop and the National Institutes of Health reports it has high nutritional value.

“I can’t think of any other city that is thinking this scientifically forward in how to use science to drive economics and improve the economic outlook of San Elizario,” Chowdhury said.

By studying purslane cultivation, Auburn University researchers hope to learn more about growing high nutrition plants with less water. Purslane is ranked as a C4 plant, which has a different metabolism than most plants and has adapted to arid environment.

Auburn University researchers and San Elizario city officials working together on urban agriculture and environmental conservation. From left, Octavio Hernandez, David Cantu, Alan Jeon, Bashira Chowdhury and Maya Sanchez. Photo by Laneighe Conde, Borderzine.com

This academic, municipal collaboration model puts San Elizario at the forefront of urban agriculture research.

“So it’s not just that we’re coming here and we’re bringing something, San Eli has actually brought a lot to us and sort of opened our eyes to we can do as scientists, and really opened up some new frontiers for us,” Chowdhury said.

The research plant beds in the Parque de los Ninos are expected to bring valuable data that can benefit city agriculture efforts far beyond San Elizario.

“This is a lesson that Phoenix is going to have, Tuscon, you know, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, everyone can use the research that we are doing here,” Chowdhury said.

Since early October, the El Paso region has seen an influx of asylum seekers released to the community after processing by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Thousands of people – mostly families from the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, but also from Cuba, Nicaragua and other nations – have passed interviews in [...]

Since early October, the El Paso region has seen an influx of asylum seekers released to the community after processing by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Thousands of people – mostly families from the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, but also from Cuba, Nicaragua and other nations – have passed interviews in which they have shown credible fear of persecution if returned to their home countries. They now face an immigration court process that could take years to determine their fate. But for the time being, they are legally entitled to live in the United States.

Upon release by ICE in El Paso, their first stop is a “hospitality center” run by a nonprofit called Annunciation House, which has provided services to migrants for more than 40 years. The hospitality center can be at a church, school or motel. (The locations are not disclosed to the public for the safety of the migrants.) Asylum seekers are given a room and three meals per day, which often are prepared by volunteers from in the area. Most families stay a day or two before boarding a bus or plane to join family elsewhere in the United States.

One hospitality center features art work created by children who have stayed at the shelter in recent days. The art is a mixture of approaches and messages. Common themes are faith, hope for the countries they have fled, and gratitude for those who helped them in their time of need.

A coalition of 40 organizations, possible presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke and U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar marched about a mile with some 10,000 people to Delta Park as part of a March for Truth to counter the President Donald Trump’s rally at the nearby El Paso County Coliseum on Monday evening. Carrying homemade signs in English [...]

A coalition of 40 organizations, possible presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke and U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar marched about a mile with some 10,000 people to Delta Park as part of a March for Truth to counter the President Donald Trump’s rally at the nearby El Paso County Coliseum on Monday evening.

Carrying homemade signs in English and Spanish, the crowd called for improved human rights, peace and an end to lies about the border. The march ended at the park with speeches by O’Rourke, Escobar and live music.

Thousands of cheering people joined President Donald Trump for a Make American Great Again rally – his first of the year – at the El Paso County Coliseum on Monday evening while thousands more outside the building watched his speech on a big screen erected in the parking lot. Trump was joined on stage by [...]

Thousands of cheering people joined President Donald Trump for a Make American Great Again rally – his first of the year – at the El Paso County Coliseum on Monday evening while thousands more outside the building watched his speech on a big screen erected in the parking lot. Trump was joined on stage by Texas GOP Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, as well as Donald Trump Jr. prior to the rally. The nationwide audience carried Build the Wall and Finish the Wall signs as the president extolled the virtues of a wall and reducing illegal immigration in one of the safest cities in the United States.

President Donald Trump took his fight for a border wall to El Paso on Monday as a coalition of anti-wall protestors staged a competing rally at the same time not far from the County Coliseum where the president held his gathering. Trump took to the stage about 7:20 p.m, before an enthusiastic crowd in the [...]

President Donald Trump took his fight for a border wall to El Paso on Monday as a coalition of anti-wall protestors staged a competing rally at the same time not far from the County Coliseum where the president held his gathering.

Trump took to the stage about 7:20 p.m, before an enthusiastic crowd in the 6,500 capacity coliseum, which was originally built for rodeos and livestock shows. The president was flanked by banners calling for “Finish the Wall.”

The competing March for Truth was organized by a coalition led by the Border Network for Human Rights, Women’s March El Paso and some 40 other community partners and included speeches by former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, and current congresswoman Veronica Escobar (D-El Paso).

El Paso has been at the center of the controversy over a border wall as Trump has demanded Congress fund $5.7 billion to erect a wall, saying it is necessary to keep the United States safe from illegal immigration, which he has called a crisis. In his State of the Union address, Trump declared El Paso was a dangerous place before the wall, but El Paso officials dispute that depiction, saying the city has been one of the safest in the nation long before border fencing was installed. The government shut down for a record 35 days from Dec. 22 to Jan. 25.

Late Monday, Republican and Democratic lawmakers announced they had an agreement in principle on border security.

EL PASO, Texas – When classical musicians perform in local hospitals, both the players and the patients find it to be good medicine. “It’s about being a healer, because the music is designed to soothe and heal and when you see that there is a change in the status of their health,” said Felipa Solis, [...]

EL PASO, Texas – When classical musicians perform in local hospitals, both the players and the patients find it to be good medicine.

“It’s about being a healer, because the music is designed to soothe and heal and when you see that there is a change in the status of their health,” said Felipa Solis, Executive Director of El Paso Pro Musica.

Performers with Pro Musica are going beyond the concert hall to bring classical music to the people, which UTEP masters cellos performance major Amy Miller said helps her as a musician to build a connection her audience.

“I think that playing for people is very important because, you know, you’re in a practice room for hours at a time and you’re playing for yourself but when you have that time to share with someone else and connect with them in that way,” she said “You know, music is an unspoken language, it’s universal.”

Solis said that playing music for hospital patients is an extension of the groups’ mission to make classical music accessible to all.

“Patients in the hospital from the beginning of life in the neonatal intensive care unit to the end, are given music for comforting reasons and it’s really amazing to see,” Solis said.

Pro Musica last performed for breast cancer patients at the The Hospitals of Providence on Sunland Park Drive. Miller said she plays a lot of classical music during medical visits, but also likes to mix it up with some familiar tunes from Broadway and movies, such as Beauty and the Beast and The Wizard of Oz.

“Pieces that they’ll understand and know and sing to and have that relationship with, I know they would enjoy beautiful music but it becomes a deeper level of knowing the song, the familiarity of the song,” Miller said.

The use of music to help in the healing process has been around for centuries, but began to emerge as a professional practice in the 1940s, according to the American Music Therapy Association. In addition to Pro Musica performances that offer opportunity to connect with classical music on an informal level. Others, like Chaplain Eduardo Henningham of Hospice of El Paso, have seen the benefits of music in all stages of life.

“I see a lot of change, especially those that, what we call ‘long term patients,’ or patients that are going through the dying process. I get expressions with those who can talk, I get expressions like “you made my day,” I can see what I call “enlightening” in their face… music helps them bring back a little bit of their memory and some of them really repeat part of the lyrics, some of them will really sing parts of the lyrics, and for me those are really life-changing.”

Solis said the program incorporated more community outreach efforts since Grammy Award-winning Zuill Bailey became artistic director in 2000.

“Everything has changed in such a great way in that the organization is much more education based,” she said. “What’s been exciting, is the fact that we can engage all the artists that we bring into the community and the region and take them to schools and have them engage with students even here on campus to do special master classes and such.”

Pro Musica musicians playing occasional sessions at local medical centers have received positive feedback, Solis said.

“You can actually see, and the doctors will attest to it, the music and the sounds, the soothing sounds of the cello actually stabilize heart rates, stabilize oxygen levels and basically you don’t hear a pin drop.”

The performances feature UTEP graduate music students.

“We work closely with the students here on campus. Amy Miller, there is a student named Ivana Biliskov and Chris Bureaus Haggis, they are all graduate students in the studio of Zuil Bailey here at UTEP and so we have a lot of other students here on campus who come and perform and want to get out in the community and share their gifts and talents,” Solis said.

As college students our main focus is usually preparing for exams, completing assignments, and trying our hardest to excel in our classes. We tend not to think too much about saving money because it’s often pretty scarce and we worry about having enough of it to pay current bills, never mind our impending student loans. [...]

As college students our main focus is usually preparing for exams, completing assignments, and trying our hardest to excel in our classes. We tend not to think too much about saving money because it’s often pretty scarce and we worry about having enough of it to pay current bills, never mind our impending student loans. Saving money takes a backseat to the other pressing financial responsibilities in our lives.

For the past three years, I have been working as an assistant at a local insurance and wealth management company. The time I have spent there, focusing on other individuals’ finances, has caused me to take a hard look at my financial future. Right now, it’s not looking too hot. However, there are a few things that I and other college students can do right now to save and prepare for a stable financial future.

1. Think small

You don’t have worry about saving every extra dime to put into high interest investment products. You can start small. One great way to do this is by creating an emergency fund. This can be your safe zone if you get a flat tire, or a speeding ticket, or you have to make an unexpected visit to see a doctor. Once you’ve locked down that emergency fund, even if it’s just a few hundred dollars, saving for the future will be a lot easier. If and when you are strapped for cash, you can dip into your emergency fund, and leave your actual savings account untouched. This can help it to thrive.

2. Be alert to bank fees

Large banks often impose hefty fees for overdrafts, monthly maintenance charges, or not meeting an account minimum. It seems a little harsh to punish students for not having enough money in their accounts. Moving your money to a smaller bank or local credit union can be a great solution. Often times, local credit unions forgo some of these fees. You’re also ensuring that your money is staying within the community. If you want to ditch bank overdraft, minimum balance and check maintenance fees all together, there are some reputable online banks that you might want to check out like Ally or Simple. Eliminating or reducing bank fees puts that money back into your pocket or savings account.

3. Monitor and limit your spending

Be careful how much you spend on frills. Is frequenting Cinci every weekend necessary? Will Chick-fil-A cease to exist if you don’t eat lunch there everyday and instead make yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at home. Of course not! Going out for drinks with friends every weekend and eating out everyday can be pretty detrimental to your bank account. And these aren’t the only culprits. Impulsive spending, online shopping, and maintaining a subscription to every streaming service available are a drain on savings as well. By starting to become mindful of exactly where your money is going, you can start to make some cuts where you have been spending too much. Mindful spending is a great tool that, if cultivated now, can help you in the years to come.

I realize that saving money may not be a priority for students with other things on their minds, like exams or going to a weekend party. But taking these measures now can establish a life-long savings habit that will lead to a more secure future.